The Hunter Creek Valley is full of historic buildings, old mining infrastructure and serene nature where locals can take refuge.
But preserving some structures takes money and people power.
Two Colorado-based nonprofits — the Hunter Creek Historical Foundation and HistoriCorps — have found a way to do it.
Project managers and volunteers have spent four years restoring the Koch Homestead site, which was established as an estate in the 1880s.
The site is made up of four buildings: a shop, a residence, an outhouse and a miner’s cabin. The structures now rise from the Hunter Creek Valley floor with restored wood gleaming against tall green grasses and pops of yellow and orange from nearby Aspen trees.
This beauty forged connections between locals and the land — and prompted preservation efforts.
“Part of it is just the beauty of the valley, and part of it is that this was some of the very earliest history,” said Graeme Means, a co-founder of the Hunter Creek Historical Foundation.
Means and other volunteers finished restoration work and studies on the buildings in September. Core samples from the miner’s cabin’s original wood revealed it’s most likely the oldest building in the Hunter Creek Valley, according to studies from HistoriCorps.
“We can't prove it, but literally this cabin could have been the first real building in the Roaring Fork Valley,” Means said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the site on Sept. 24.
Forged connections
Means and his four other historical foundation co-founders spent decades fishing, hiking, biking and skiing in the Hunter Creek Valley while appreciating its history. He said this valley is special, quiet and holds invaluable stories.
But over the years, the group also watched the buildings slowly deteriorate and return to the earth. The eventual collapse of an old barn in the late 1990s warned them about the condition of the remaining structures.
“That was our inspiration — that collapsed barn — we remember when that was up, and then it wasn’t up,” Means said. “We just said we got to do something.”
The dilapidated barn can still be seen next to the restored site. It’s a stark reminder of what could have happened to the four remaining buildings if the historical foundation hadn’t stepped in.
However, finding funding and support for these types of projects was difficult at first. Grants can be competitive, and volunteers can be hard to come by.
Shortly after the Hunter Creek Historical Foundation was founded in 2021, they connected with HistoriCorps — a Denver-based nonprofit specializing in these types of projects.
“We're a rare bird,” said Mardita Murphy, a project manager at HistoriCorps. “A construction company that operates in a nonprofit space that uses a volunteer workforce. So, we're figuring out a lot of things as we go.”
Murphy has been on the Hunter Creek project since the beginning. She manages the Four Corners region and the Missouri Basin.
HistoriCorps projects span across the country, from California to Virginia, and mainly focus on buildings, like cabins, farms and old homes.
For the last four summers, dozens of volunteers have traveled to Aspen to build foundations, stabilize roofs and walls, and weather new wood to match original beams.
“Some of you have been working on this project for several years,” Murphy said at the ribbon-cutting.
“We were here five years ago, putting our heads together, trying to figure out what this would look like and how we could all contribute to that effort,” she added.
They decided preservation efforts at the Koch Homestead would focus on stabilizing the four buildings, while keeping their original character and context in the valley.
For most of the buildings, teams had enough original material to rebuild them close to how they would have originally looked. But for the miner’s cabin, little wood remained, so crews largely had to guess what it looked like over 100 years ago.
Homestead history
The structures in the Hunter Creek Valley represent Aspen’s early years.
“These buildings are some of the few remaining physical connections to the people and events that helped create Aspen,” said Howie Mallory, a co-founder of the Hunter Creek Historical Foundation.
William C. E. Koch, an immigrant from Germany, lived in the Hunter Creek Valley in the 1880s. He was known as the “king of lumber,” and his homestead played an important role in Aspen’s history — providing miners food, dairy products and lumber for cabins and mine shafts.
“There's a lot of things going on up here that really were instrumental in terms of the early development of Aspen,” said George Newman, another co-founder of the historical foundation.
“I don’t think we could understate that,” he added.
The site later housed Basque sheepherders during the 1950s and ‘60s, before the Hunter Creek Valley became the year-round recreational mecca it is today. Cross-country skiers, fly fishers, mountain bikers and trail runners make use of what the landscape has to offer.
The Koch Homestead and surrounding Hunter Creek Valley are located in the White River National Forest. Therefore, the Hunter Creek Historical Foundation and HistoriCorps had to get the U.S. Forest Service to sign off on the restoration.
“This has been a long time in the making,” said Jennifer Schuler, a ranger for the Aspen-Sopris Ranger District. “I know that a lot of thoughtful review and planning went into what we're going to see today.”
The Forest Service completed an extensive inventory of the valley in the ‘90s. Numerous building materials and other cultural resources have been found over the years.
Historic artifacts, like old coins, boots and bottles, have been found in and around the area — as well as more modern finds, like tubs of ski wax.
They also did an archaeological survey in 2004, but the agency has not done any substantial work at the site since then.
Schuler emphasizes the importance of collaborations like these to preserve what’s within public lands as a part of U.S. history. Sometimes it takes dogged determination, which is what the Hunter Creek Historical Foundation did.
“They often would just drop by the ranger station, and we'd have conversations,” Schuler recalled, laughing at the ribbon cutting. “A lot went into just the relationship-building aspect of getting work done on the ground.”
It can be difficult corralling so many different agencies on a project like this — especially when both HistoriCorps and the Forest Service were facing budget cuts, fewer personnel, and public land protection rollbacks last year.
A success story
Some HistoriCorps projects were put on hold last year, but not the Hunter Creek site.
Aspen is relatively close to HistoriCorps’ Denver headquarters, and despite Forest Service struggles, the rangers that remain are dedicated to the area’s valleys, mountains and rivers.
The passion of five men — now in their 70s — also didn’t hurt.
“It took all kinds of different talents, and we all had different talents,” Means said. “When something needed to be done, somebody would step up. It was really enjoyable and grew us together.”
But work is still not done. The nonprofits will return for one more summer next year, where volunteers will work to preserve and stabilize the Dam Keeper’s Cabin, about a half mile away from the main Koch Homestead site.
Built in 1886, the cabin was associated with a small reservoir that diverted water from Hunter Creek for Aspen’s early hydroelectric Project. Means said he’s looking forward to learning more about this sacred valley — while maintaining its remote, peaceful spirit.
“If a hiker walks by here now that we've done everything, and doesn't realize we did anything, that's success in our minds,” Means said. “The valley here is so special and quiet, so we try to respect that.”
Support for this Nonprofit Spotlight series comes from the Aspen Community Foundation.
